


to me, she was, those final steps

by gilligankane



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:14:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27011089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilligankane/pseuds/gilligankane
Summary: Jamie returns to Bly Manor, just once.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 12
Kudos: 277





	to me, she was, those final steps

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't been able to put them down yet. And so, here is something that wouldn't leave me alone. Set very far into Jamie's future.

_To me, she was,_   
_those final steps,_   
_the turn around the last bend,_   
_the house,_   
_with a light on,_   
_and a fire lit,_   
_and a faint laugh in the distance on the warm wind._   
_That was she._   
_She was my always coming home._

_\- Atticus_

* * *

Jamie returns to Bly Manor, just once.

Age has crept up on her the way it never would for Dani, her gray hair now a snowy white. Her body aches at night, a throbbing pulse deep within her bones that keeps her awake. Her hands, her feet, her wrists - all failing without her consent. 

She tidies her small apartment, the one she shared with Dani for thirteen years.  _ Not enough _ _,_ she thinks.  _ It was not enough time.  _ She’s still woven into each room. Her jean jacket hangs by the door. A pair of shoes are tucked into the closet. Their pictures dot the walls - their adventures across the country, documented with an old Polaroid camera they found in a secondhand store. 

Jamie runs her finger along each of them before she leaves, pretending for a moment that Dani’s perfect face is right there within her reach. 

The assistant she hired for The Leafling is watching the shop. Jamie likes the girl. She’s young, excited. Ambitious. She reminds Jamie of Dani. The way she talks, the light in her eyes. She busies herself with the store, tending to each plant the way Jamie imagines Dani tended to her students; the way she tended to Flora and Miles. 

As the plane touches down in London, Jamie stares at the city through the small window for a moment. She wonders what her life would have been like if she stayed. She would still live in Bly, that much was for certain. She might still be tending to the garden at the manor, though she’s sure it would have passed to Flora and Miles and their children and maybe their children’s children one day. She might still be living in that one-room apartment above the pub. She might have even convinced Dani to stay in Bly, to start a life together there among the flowers of the greenhouse, moonflowers growing each year.

She meets Owen in Bly. 

He walks with a cane now, resting his weight heavily on it with each step. They take the taxi together up to the manor. The silence settles around them just as easily as it had 50 years ago, peaceful and welcome. His hand covers hers on the seat and she’s grateful. As the manor looms in the distance, she starts to feel a churning in her stomach, unwelcome and gnawing at her insides. He must notice. He squeezes her hand just once and when she turns to look at him, she sees him younger, eyes as dark as they were the night they drove this road furiously, that bad feeling hanging heavily above them. 

The driveway is longer than she remembers, the manor a shadow on the horizon. The vines are climbing up the sides of the brick. The parapet is run over. The shrubs grow wild and tall around them, hiding the statue garden. 

Bly Manor, like them all, has aged. 

The wide front doors open with a groan. The grand staircase rises up from the floor, disappearing into the dark shadows of the second floor. It’s still breathtaking, all these years later. She remembers the first time she saw them, Charlotte Wingrave chattering around her, giving her a history lesson she wasn’t listening to. The house was larger - larger than anything she had ever seen before. The garden was impressive, if not in need of some care. She had fallen in love in a breath.

_ It’s funny _ _,_ she thinks. She felt the same way the first time she saw Dani smile. 

Owen’s cane bumps on the floor beside her as he stands next to her. She can almost hear the loud banging of feet on the staircase, Hannah’s voice shouting up after the kids as they ducked her eyes. She can almost see four chairs lined up before the stairs, a small wisp of a girl with makeup on her face and a story to tell.

She’s been living with ghosts her entire life. These ones feel familiar. 

The manor hasn’t changed in the years since she left it in the rearview mirror, Dani’s hand over hers. The hallways lead to the same places, the stairs up to the same rooms. They walk each of them, Owen stopping every few steps to catch his breath. She enjoys the rest, soaking in the walls of the manor. 

She remembers the awe of seeing them for the first time. She remembers how the house became so familiar. She stops outside of the room she knew was Flora’s, feeling something drift around her as she thinks of kissing Dani in this hallway, her hands curled around Dani’s elbows.

_ There are other nights and there will be other nights _ _,_ she remembers saying. 

Dani had smiled into their kiss.

They walk the cavernous halls, letting the memories soak in. She had only been at Bly Manor for a few years but she lived a lifetime in this house. She knew the grounds like she knew how to breathe, each root in the ground like a worn, familiar step. It feels like she never left like all these years between were just a short trip to town.

Those years had Dani, though, and she keeps each one of them close and tucked away inside of her. 

They pause in the kitchen and she nearly gasps.

The light filters through the window and Jamie can see the ghosts of the people she knew. Hannah laughs, her hand on Owen’s arm. Dani smiles down into her plate before she looks up and catches Jamie’s eyes, her cheeks flushed. Miles brandishes his fork at Flora and she bats him away, her laugh like high and light in the air. 

She knows Owen sees it too. His eyes shine, glassy and bright. She presses her hand to his arm and he turns to look at her, smiling sadly at the memory in front of them. Hannah is still laughing, her mouth wide in a smile that Jamie can’t help but smile back at. Owen is next to her, saying something neither of them can hear, but Hannah just laughs and laughs, her head thrown back and her earrings catching the light.

Dani is there, close enough for Jamie to touch if she reached out. 

She nearly does. She wants to. It’s been years. Her fingers almost forget what it felt like to trace the lines of Dani’s face, what it felt like to run them down her spine.

But she knows it’s not the same. It’s a memory, the same one she sees when she sleeps at night, door open and the bathtub filled to the brim. It’s not Dani. It’s just a piece of Dani that exists here in the walls of Bly Manor. It’s a memory this house maintains, keeping them intact for as long as Jamie and Owen are there to see it.

They drift out of the house and across the grounds, through the statue garden. Jamie doesn’t recognize this place, these vines. The flowers she carefully tended and the shrubs she carefully cut back are wild and overgrown now. No one has touched them in years. She wants to kneel down beside the beds and dig her fingers into the earth. She can bring them back to life, she knows. 

_ Something for Dani to see _ _,_ she thinks. 

Owen leaves her at the small church. She watches him linger in the doorway and hopes he sees what he wants to see: Hannah kneeling at the small altar, the candles flickering around her as she turns to smile at him.

She moves past the church and its small graveyard where the Lloyd’s are buried, through the overgrown grass and past the greenhouse, its windows broken and worn. She stops for just a moment to look at it, remembering that early morning where Dani snuck in before the sun had come up fully in the sky, a cup of coffee in her hand and a hopeful look in her eyes.  _ Poppins, you flirt . _

The lake stretches out in front of her like some terrible thing. 

A chill runs up her spine. The last time she had been in it, water soaking through her clothes and running down her face, it had been cold. The warm summer air drifts around her now, not like the frosty nip of the air she felt before. She walks forward and forward and forward until her toes nearly touch the water where it rests against the grass. 

“Dani,” she calls quietly.

A doctor called last week to tell her the news.

“Poppins,” she tries. 

The wind whispers back at her. 

“Well, I’m sure you already know about… about it all.” She sighs, her thumb running across the face of the ring she’s worn for nearly 40 years. Its worn golden crown feels grounding, tying her to this moment. “But I had to come. I had to come back here, to see this house. To see if I could find you,” she admits.

She feels Dani everywhere. In the kitchen making a cup of tea. In The Leafling arranging bouquets. In the walls of their apartment. She feels her in the early light of day and the quiet dark of night. She just can’t  _ see _ her. She doesn’t see her in the reflection of the windows or the puddles. She has her memories, 13 years of memories, but they’re starting to fade now. Dani gets a little further away with each memory that comes and goes. 

Jamie thought maybe, if she came to Bly Manor, she might find her again.

The lake ripples with the wind and it bites at her toes. She stares into its depth. She remembers diving under the water, seeing Dani laying there at the bottom. There’s a familiar burn at the back of her eyes that comes when she thinks about that long dive to the depths of the lake. She clenches her hand, holding it to her heart. It beats under her touch.

She used to press her hand to Dani’s heart and feel it pulse. In those years that Dani started to slip away, staring into pools of water, she used to hold onto what she could. And Dani’s heart, that was still hers. It would always be hers. It would never be the heart of the Lady in the Lake. It would remain Dani’s long after nothing else of Dani remained. 

And Dani’s heart, Dani made sure, would always belong to Jamie. 

She closes her eyes and thinks of Dani. She thinks of bringing her to the surface. She thinks of the lake parting and Dani walking up from its depths, that soft and hopeful smile on her face, that perfect face; that sparkling ring on her finger; that look in her eyes she saved only for Jamie. She imagines Dani stepping in front of her, fingertips dripping water as she cupped Jamie’s cheek and rested her forehead against Jamie’s. She imagines breathing in Dani’s smell, that soft floral smell that came from hours surrounded in blooming flowers.

And then Dani is in front of her, clear as day.

“Hi,” Dani breathes.

Jamie opens her mouth but the words won’t come. She searches for something to say, anything, but there’s nothing. Dani smiles at her as if she knows there are a million things Jamie wants to say to her. Her eyes are wide and bright, not a minute older than the last time Jamie saw here, eyes fluttering as she fell asleep in the bed they shared for 13 years. Dani reaches up, her fingertips ghosting across Jamie’s cheek like a cool breeze.

This is why she came to Bly. This is what she came to find.

_ Dani _ .

She opens her eyes but Dani isn’t there standing in front of her. There’s nothing but the lake, looking back at her.

She closes them again and Dani is back, holding out a hand for Jamie to take.

She wants to take it. She wants to walk into that lake with Dani and finally rest. But she knows she can’t. She knows she tried this once before. And she knows how it ends. She knows Dani won’t take her. She knows Dani will never take anyone again, even her.  _ Especially me, _ Jamie thinks. 

So she smiles sadly and doesn’t bother to blink back the tears she can feel slipping down her cheeks. Dani’s still smiling hopefully back at her but there’s a soft resignation to it. She knows she has to walk back into the water, to sleep until it's time to wake again. Jamie knows Dani has to go, back to the depths of the lake to rest.

She opens her eyes and breathes in deeply, the smell of a blooming moonflower drifting around her. 

The taxi idles in the driveway. Owen prays in the church, speaking only to Hannah.

Jamie waits patiently beside the lake. She’s been waiting her whole life, it seems. For Dani. For this woman she loved,  _ loves _ , so fiercely.

She can keep waiting.


End file.
